Education
He earned his Master of Arts and his Doctor of Philosophy at the Folklore Institute at Indiana University Bloomington.
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Michael Mason
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He is the Director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Mason is the youngest of three children born to John Skain Mason and Ardath Mason Cade. Born in McCook, Nebraska, he was raised in the Washington, District of Columbia, metropolitan area.
After studying classics at Saint John"s College (Annapolis/Santa Fe), New Mexico, for two years, Mason transferred to the University of Oregon, where he earned his Bachelor in American studies and was elected the Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society.
Mason began his career at the Anacostia Community Museum, where he worked as a researcher and exhibit developer for the Black Mosaic exhibition. In 1994, he moved to the National Museum of Natural History to work as an exhibit developer and co-curator on the African Voices exhibit.
In 2009, he became the Director of Exhibitions, where he was instrumental in the development and opening of the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in 2010. As one of the leaders of the Recovering Voices initiative at the Smithsonian, he has led the planning for the proposed Recovering Voices exhibition at NMNH, designed to put a human face on the global crisis of language and knowledge loss.
In 2012, he led a collaboration between the Smithsonian and the non-governmental organization Cultural Survival to host the international conference, "Our Voices on the Air: Reaching New Audiences through Indigenous Radio", convening 28 radio producers from eight countries to explore the nexus of community radio and language revitalization.
At the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Mason oversees the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and other cultural educational programs. Mason served as an exhibit developer for the inaugural exhibition at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1992, Mason has published many articles on the religion and culture of the African Diaspora.
His research focuses on the processes through which people deploy elements of the cultural heritage to construct their personal histories and identities, and he has focused extensively on the social construction of human subjectivity and experience.
His book, Living Santería: Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion, was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 2002, and was nominated for the Award for Ethnographic Writing. Mason is also the author of the cultural blog dedicated to Babalu Aye, Baba Who? Babalú!.
Achievements
Membership
He is a member of the founding faculty of the Cultural Sustainability Masters Program at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, where he teaches students to develop community-based exhibitions that serve local needs.
